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Pike, Baked

A whole pike stuffed with veal forcemeat, coated in egg and breadcrumbs, then baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 5 ingredients
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Why it works: Egg and butter are a kitchen classic. They rank in the top 17% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 118,967 recipes. Both carry decanal, which smells soap, orange peel. The science ↓

Pike, Baked

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the fish

  1. Wash, clean, and scale the fish, then remove the fins and gills.

  2. Fill the inside with forcemeat and sew up the opening.

  3. Brush the fish with beaten egg and cover with breadcrumbs.

  4. Truss the fish in a round shape, fastening the tail in the mouth with a skewer if desired.

Bake

  1. Before baking, baste the fish well with hot fat or butter.

  2. Baste frequently during cooking and keep covered with greased paper.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Egg + buttertop 17% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together118,967 recipes

    Shared aroma: decanal (soap, orange peel).

  2. Veal + buttertop 23% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together9,381 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Veal + eggtop 28% of all pairs
    Smell alikelow
    Cooked together6,845 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Veal forcemeat
Fills the cavity, adding moisture and richness to the lean fish as it bakes.
Egg
Beaten egg brushed on the fish helps the breadcrumbs adhere and form a crust.
Brown breadcrumbs
Form a crisp, browned coating on the outside of the fish.
Butter or fat
Basting adds moisture and helps the surface brown and stay tender.

The step that matters

Basting during baking. Pike is lean and dries out easily, so regular basting with hot fat keeps the flesh moist and helps the breadcrumb coating brown evenly.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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